The New Creation: Heart of the Church and Scripture

© Copyright 2011 Daniel Obikwelu.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

isbn: 978-1-4669-0130-8 (sc)

isbn:

978-1-4669-0131-5 (hc)

isbn:

978-1-4669-0132-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011919844

Trafford rev. 09/06/2012

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Contents

Author’s Note

The Image Was Christ

Divine Mystery at Work

Divinity and Humanity in Marriage

The Creator Is One of Us

Existing but Not Seen

New Adam and Eve

The Lamb Is God

Call into New Life

You Must Be Born Again

You Must Do the Will of God

We Are Under a Call

Call to Know Yourself

You Are Called to Prayer

You Must Be Charitable

You Are the Alchemist with Christ

Call into Communion with the Saints

We Are the Ambassadors of Christ?

The Church Is the Nursing Mother

We Are the Temple of the Holy Spirit

A Soldier of Christ

The Portion of a Christian

God Is Our Father

Unique Identity

He Has Made All Things New

Growing Out of Yourself

The Merciful God

Transforming into Christ

We Shall Be Like Christ

God Is All in All

The Confessions and the

Mystery of Our Salvation

The Age of the Virgin Mary

WORK CONSULTED

This book is dedicated to you

His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI and Our Lady of Ephesus, the Mother of all Christians.

It is my prayer that all Christians will put off their misunderstandings and unite back under the Motherhood of Virgin Mary and truly keep unity of one spirit in a bond of peace, and truly confess in one body, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God who is the father of all just as Ephesians 4 is pleading.

A special thanks to all my lovely friends who helped me in so many ways to make this night a glorious day, to many priests who helped in encouraging me to stand firm in the troubles of the stage of present moment especially Fr George Mary Roth, Rev Canon Christopher Tuckwell, Fr Stewart Foster, to that Marian priest, Fr Ejike who always bless me in spirit; to my young nephew Chima Obikwelu who made good illustration for me, to A Day With Mary lay Apostolate group, and most of all to my precious parents Christopher and Angelina Obikwelu, may God bless you all.

Author’s Note

This is one of the most wonderful works the church of Christ is so much in need of; you too can not miss it, hearing the title will inspire a mystical joy in you, reading it will transform your life, accepting it will purge all your darkness and transfer you into the true kingdom of God.

It is called The New Creation. A Christian is a new born baby who needs to grow into the fullness of Christ, who called us to Himself not to remain what we used to be, but to grow up in various ways into Himself. It is a mystery about Jesus and Virgin Mary and what they achieved in us who are the fruits of their work. Christ said I have not come to condemn the world, but that the world through me might be saved. The old man through the sin of Adam and Eve died, but Jesus and Virgin Mary through their obedience and sacrifice restored everything and exalted man into a new and mystical existence. We also enter into the mystery of the body and blood of Jesus Christ, explaining some mysteries hidden in the heart of the church and the scripture. The heart is the central unit of life and the most secret part of man, and through the Holy Spirit, the heart of the church and the scripture is revealed in this book for the last evangelism before that great day of the Lord. It is a massage of righteousness, healing and the truth; it is a call to a new life filled with fiery revelations that God in Christ used Virgin Mary to restore what Eve had damaged.

The best thing to do when you realize that people receives consolations in your advice is to put your mind in print. So that the world at large could hear your voice and benefit from it. The best way to do it is to start with the spirituality which the Holy Spirit has given birth in your heart.

I was given a large heart to share my life with all the creatures of God, especially with the church of Jesus Christ, to be a slave to all people of good will—to them that love God with all their heart. This book is not my work in any way, but of the Holy Spirit who gave birth to this truth in my heart in a glorious way, in which he set my heart on fire of the divine love. This has been growing in my heart each day as I have been waiting for the glorious day when I will be set aside standing on the rock to proclaim it, but not realising that it is only today that belongs to me, as tomorrow which belongs to God, I may not see. Breaking free, I fall at the feet of holy Christ and adore Him for the knowledge and power of the present moment which I count as gain—dwelling in it today to glorify Him tomorrow, because through Him, with Him, in Him we co-exists in the future even though we may never see it with this eye. Therefore, I thank the present moment even though it hurts, I adore the Eternal God who placed me here and now as part of the unknown tomorrow full of glorious symphony of the Holy Spirit.

My little advice to you is the word of St Philip Neri, As you meditate on this book is to take it real slow, not from mere curiosity, but quietly and with recollection, please make sure you pause even for the whole day whenever your heart is touched with devotion. This is a time to go back to our basis because a bird that flies without going back to its nest must fall into a snare.

A

NEW CREATION

A tree is cut down from the base, a new shoot grows and buds out of it, the new growth has a different life though it is rooted in the old tree; now there is a bitter struggle going on between them because the old foundation is struggling to make the new shoot grow the same way it did. The new one wants total freedom but it is rooted in the former. This is exactly the bitter fight between the old man and the new man—for your old self must chase and continue to fight you all the days of your life.

The Image Was Christ

Blessed be the Eternal Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, both now and forever. Blessed be Virgin Mary, who laboured so much for the salvation of the whole world. Blessed be the eyes of the apostles, who saw and heard what the prophets and kings longed to see and hear but never did.

It is my blessed pleasure, oh eternal Christ, to ascribe greatness to thy Holy Spirit who gave me wisdom to write this book, The New Creation. As you inspire a weak man like me to write this book, forgive all my errors and mistakes, for no one can possibly write a bit about you, the Infinite, without an error.

In Him is life in its fullness, and this life He poured out into a moulded image of Himself and it became a man. The man He just made looked like Him and possessed the qualities of God who made man by pouring out into him the life which is the nature of God. But Adam and Eve, who were the parents of all living men, could not stand the test of their destiny, and through their disobedience, they fell from the exulted nature God had given them in His mercy, from being the glory of God, they became the glory of the earth; sin and death became their master because they swapped their destiny for the beauty of a fruit.

What is man that you keep him in mind? Yet you have made him little less than God, crowned him with glory and honour, gave him power over all the works of your hands, put all things under His feet. (Psalm 8)

Before the fall of man, man was an exulted, earthly being because of the qualities of God he possessed; the land and sea beings feared him, and evil spirits feared him because the nature of God was in man. Even the angels of God admired, man, who looked just like their God. Among all the earthly beings, man was unique. It seemed that this creator took a form when He was creating man, because man is not a product of evolution but is a spirit in the body.

Then God said, let the earth bring forth the living creature according to its kind, cattle and everything that creeps. (Genesis 1;24)

The earth produced every other thing but could not produce anything that looked like God, for how could the earth produce a form like its creator? When different kinds of animals were being formed, there was a huge voice that kept echoing to the hearing of heaven and earth, Who is like God? There was a big calm and stillness after all these animal formations, but nothing among them looked like God. Then God came down in a form just as He would later do when He took the flesh of Virgin Mary. He stooped down, took some proportion of earth in his holy hand, and moulded a figure that looked like Him. He breathed on it, and it became a man, a talking spirit like his maker, the Almighty God. Adam knew Him who made him; thus he was called the Son of God. Just like a child who grew up and knew his parents, and parents in turn told their children who his great grandparents were, in the same way Adam shared his story with his children, and they to their own children. That is how we came to know that Adam was made by God. Even Christ confirms the creation of Adam and Eve by God on the sixth day of creation.

God who made man at the beginning made them male and female. (Matthew. 19:4)

If Christ the Lord of all spirits—who cannot lie confirmed this indisputable fact in the days of His flesh, how could man, the fruit of the earth, challenge the basic truth of his existence by spreading this error of evolution with the aim of turning the hearts of men against the truth of his origin? God did not create an animal that eventually evolved into man; He created man in His own image and likeness, and we are the complete image of God because man looked like God the first day.

Man has been rebelling against God since his day on earth, but God has been so merciful that He never forsakes man after his fall in the garden of Eden; God kept preparing the way to reconcile Himself with man, for He said, How can I let man, my image to perish. After the fall of man, God could not withstand the nakedness of man, His image, so He made clothes and covered them.

Thus God continued withHis merciful deeds towards man, despite the evil imaginations of man’s heart until the day of Abraham, God’s bosom friend. Abraham was God’s most faithful servant, but he had to endure lots of trials and difficulties of life because the God’s call is always a call from existence to death and then resurrection. After his patience, Abraham was transformed and God sealed a covenant with him, made him a blessing, and declared that in Abraham’s seed shall the whole family of the earth be blessed and reconciled with God.

This promise to Abraham was the beginning of the preparation of the way of this seed, upon whom shall depend the salvation of the world. From the days of blessed Abraham and Sarah, his wife, and all the patriarchs, holy supplication was being made unto the Lord day and night. All the barreness in the generation of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, all the troubles and tribulations of this holy patriarchs, God allowed as sacrifices in preparing the way of the prince who would wear the crown. All the prophets and servants of God connected to Abraham shared in this sacrifice, longing and praying for the arrival of this promised seed; as they multiplied in number, so did their sacrifices multiply, even as Moses declared to them that God will send another prophet like me, Him you must listen. And so their sacrifice multiplied for God to send this mighty prophet, who is the final oracle of the word of God. The Jews laboured so much for the whole world; they gave the world salvation.

Prophets are not only the messengers of God, but they also experience God in His actions; in them He speaks and speaks through them. Their faith in God reached the level of truth and reality; thus they did exploits, subdued kingdoms, worked righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, became valiant in battle, and turned to flight the army of the aliens (Heb. 11).

Time has failed me to tell in detail all their actions one after another, but they are detailed in the book of life in the Old Testament sections. We will talk a little bit about St John the Baptist, who finished that mighty bridge that the prophets before him had been building since the day of Abraham; that bridge led into Christ Jesus of Nazareth, the seed God promised to Abraham. John the Baptist was the last prophet who completed that which the prophets and the holy patriarchs have been building since the Almighty God declared it in Genesis 3.

The seed of a woman will crush the head of the serpent. (Genesis 3; 15)

John is also the prophecy in the book of Isaiah 40, which the word of God said through Isaiah when Isaiah, during the days of his prophecy, heard the voice of a wild man crying in the wilderness to make straight the way of the Lord. This voice of the last prophet had been speaking in the wilderness where only the prophets could enter to hear the mystical symphony and the destiny of the world. In this wilderness, the whole noble company of prophets were united through the mystical union of the word of God, which brought them together in achieving one goal which was the salvation of humanity. Death is not a barrier in the connection that exists in the lives of the prophets, because they are comrades and age mates in spirit. Thus in the last days of Christ, Moses and Elijah appeared on the mountain of Tabor and were discussing with Jesus His imminent death, which He was about to accomplish—a continuation of this unity towards the redemption of man. Understand this mystery in this manner: in building a structure or a house, an architect, electrician, carpenter, bricklayer, plumber, and other skilled workers come together towards building one house; each of them complements and exults each other. Yes even so, all the prophets complement and recommend each other, because they are all programmed by the eternal word of God. And yet their mystical union is withheld from their knowledge, for each of these prophets lived as if it was only him with God.

All the prophets understand their individual mission: what, how, and when to speak and do, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit; thus John the Baptist came baptising and preaching repentance and forgiveness of sin to do the finishing work of introducing the Messiah after preparing His way, just as the Scripture said:

Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to His temple. (Malachi 3:1)

The birth of John the Baptist was glorious and miraculous because of his divine mandate and mission; he was filled with the Holy Spirit, sanctified and freed from the original sin even from the womb. His first six months in the womb of his mother were not really an easy adventure, because he was held in bondage by the negative element of the world and by the same chains and shackles that held all children of Eve, until the arrival of the long-expected virgin with child, Mary of Nazareth. Thus he was leaping for joy in the womb of his holy mother, Elizabeth, as soon as his mother heard the greeting of Mary, the Mother of God. He was first to receive the first fruit of the incarnation, and therefore Mary had to make this divinely planned journey specifically for his freedom. The Mother of God was with Elizabeth’s family till John was born to ensure that he enjoyed that fullness of freedom from original sin. It was the wonderful work of the divine providence that Godman in the womb of Virgin Mary was fully present in the house of Elizabeth and Zachariah at the birth of John the Baptist. Because his voice has been sounding in the wilderness even in the days of his predecessors, all prophets have direct connections to each other, because it was the same word of God coming to them; thus Isaiah saw the days of John the Baptist, and David in Psalms and other prophets saw the days of Christ. John was destined to live a real desert life because it was a prophecy that must be fulfilled, for him to have real connection to the divine spirits.

The will and the word of God must come to pass; it has its way even in the wickedness of men. The mystical knowledge of the saints says that when King Herod decreed that all infants from two years old would be killed in his efforts of hunting down the baby Jesus, Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, was divinely informed and she took her baby son and fled into the desert; there she died so that divine providence will take place. Yes Isaiah in his days saw him in the wilderness. He must have been a wild prophet, because he had direct training from the Holy Spirit because of the importance of his ministry towards the salvation of the world, to accomplish the work that had been going on long before he was born, to show the world the Lamb of God.

His ministry was a restoring ministry, for Jesus would later call him The burning and shining lamp, because in him contained the oracle of God’s light that burned the enemies of God, making way for the Messiah and shining so that men of goodwill who had been waiting for the Messiah could see Him.

Angel Gabriel declared this about John the Baptist.

He will be great in the sight of the Lord and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink, he will be filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother’s womb, and he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God. He will also go before Him in the spirit and power of Elijah. To turn the heart of the fathers to children and disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. (Luke 1)

He turns many people’s heart to God, and he can still turn your heart to the lord God if you would humble yourself now and ask for his intercession. I tell you that his ministry continues because even death could not stop any divine ministry; the gift and calling of God is irrevocable. In life or afterlife, the ministry of the prophets and saints continues until the end of human history. All the servants of the Lord who did His will on earth continues with their ministry for eternity in an exulted way, though we may not see them anymore. The soul of every saint on earth is going through transformation for greater work; once the earthly life is over, he would enter into real spiritual life God has been preparing him for, where he will be completely free because flesh and blood cannot hold him captive anymore. Each heavenly host, angels and saints, has a seal of God on them, and God dwells in them for His own purpose; thus some saints are moved by spirit to say that when their life on earth is over, they are coming back on earth to help their fellow citizens of heaven who are still struggling in flesh. St Theresa of the child Jesus said this; St Maria Faustina, the secretary of divine mercy, said it; and even St Padre Pio, the stigmatic priest dared to say that he would be at the gate of heaven till all his brothers and sisters had entered heaven.

John went to the entire region around Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. (Luke 3)

He who has been trained by the Holy Spirit, who had as companions the angels and wild animals, cannot fear mortals because he is the greatest man born of a woman. His message was like a thunderbolt; like a shining and burning light Jesus called him. He smoothed the way for Christ with the announcement of the coming of a great man. He cleansed the heart of people from errors of false devotions. Before the coming of John, there had been many years of silence and a prevalence of evil because God had not sent them prophets for many years. The heart of man had grown so cold, and many were filled with the doctrine of demons for, a city without the prophet of God is a decadent.

His teachings are more of rebuke and call for repentance; people saw his boldness and fearlessness, and some of them supposed him to be the Messiah, because that generation had not experience the charisma and radicalism of the prophets. People were following him from place to place because of his exulted teaching, some because of his strange but glorious attire and appearance, and some because of the oppression of Romans. They wanted a fearless person like John who could lead them in revolt against the Roman government, but John was a humble servant who would only want his master to increase so that he would decrease; he was not in any way the prince of the world who would fight for the glory of the world.

What a humble state God wants His servants to take. John remembered vividly what He who sent him said to him, and he fulfilled the duty for which he was sent by glorifying Christ, turning every attention, honour, and praise to Him and finally showing Him the way he has made for Him.

Divine Mystery at Work

There shall come forth a rod from the stem of Jesse and a branch shall grow out of his roots. (Isaiah 11)

St Bede commented on the above Scripture, saying that "Virgin Mary shall be born of the root of David and Christ